2. Consider Upgrading the Graphics Card

We’ve got this second on the list, but if you’re a serious gamer then it should probably be the first thing you upgrade. If you aren’t a serious gamer, 3D modeler, or 3D animator, then you might not ever need to upgrade it at all.

And on modern systems integrated graphics is good enough for most users. It’ll let you do some Photoshop work, or watch 4K video. And more than 10 percent of users on Steam are even gaming with integrated graphics.

But if you do need superior graphics performance, for gaming or VR work, then upgrading to something like a Radeon RX580 will give you a big boost. You can compare the performance of dedicated cards against your current option at gpu.userbenchmark.com.

3. Get a Faster Storage Drive

There are two reasons to upgrade your hard drive: you’re running out of space or you want faster performance.

If you’ve done everything you can to free up your hard disk storage and still regularly run out of space, then you will need to swap it out for a larger one. Not only does a full hard drive make it impossible to save new data, but it can also impact performance. At the very least, try to keep 10GB of free space for the operating system to use.

For hard disk drives, consider upgrading the physical speed. If your PC currently has a 5400RPM drive, then upgrading to a 7200RPM model will give you a nice speed boost.

But the fastest option is to switch to a solid state drive. These use flash memory instead of a spinning disk and are many times faster than a typical hard disk drive. (Not to mention more reliable, too.)

On average, a 5400RPM drive might achieve write speeds up to 100Mbps, a 7200RPM drive up to 150Mbps, and a solid state drive over 500Mbps. Higher end SSDs like the Samsung 970 EVO have incredibly high write speeds of 1500Mbps and more.

The downsides to solid state drives are that they have much smaller capacities and are more expensive than hard disk drives.

If you don’t want to compromise on size, a hybrid drive combines the best of both worlds. These have a small amount of flash memory—where your most commonly used files are cached for instant retrieval—and a traditional hard disk that provides large capacity for storing long-term data.

4. Upgrading the Processor

Upgrading your PC’s processor is a far more advanced task than the other upgrades we’ve covered so far. Not only is it physically trickier to install, it’s one of the more expensive upgrades and there are compatibility issues to worry about, too.

More importantly, a processor upgrade isn’t always a good thing and may not bring you the performance improvement you’re looking for.

The benchmark tests at cpubenchmark.net can help you compare the relative performances of different processors. In general, these tests show that modest updates don’t deliver big improvements.

A processor is only worth upgrading if the upgrade is significant, like moving from an i3 to an i5, or from an older generation to a newer one. Don’t go for something just because it has a faster clock speed.

Ultimately, if your processor is the speed bottleneck in your system, you might want to consider buying a whole new system altogether.

5. How Upgrading Software Can Improve Performance

Chances are that the programs on your PC are set to update automatically. If not, you probably click the Update button as soon as you’re alerted to the release of new program versions.

In most cases this is the right thing to do. But not always. For a lot of software, the version number is depicted in the form of Major.Minor.Revision. So, if an update is 0.0.1, then it’s likely to be bug fixes. If it’s 0.1.0, then it likely includes optimizations and small new features. Minor and Revision updates should be installed right away.

But Major updates—a change in the full version number—are a different matter. It’s almost a given that new versions of programs will use more resources than old versions, so if your PC’s hardware is already being stretched to the max, you should deal with that first.

The same goes for operating system updates. The regular incremental updates are essential for performance and security reasons, but whole new versions aren’t. They will almost certainly have bugs and may run slow on your system.

If your PC is running fine, it’s worth holding off on operating system upgrades until you’re absolutely sure they won’t turn out to be downgrades.

What Else Should You Upgrade?

The motherboard is the most difficult of all upgrades since all of the other PC parts attach to it. It’s only worth considering if you’re dead set on a new processor that’s not compatible with your current setup. It won’t give you much of a speed boost on its own.

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Godel

January 1, 2019 at 11:20 pm

The reliability of SSDs vs HDDs is debatable. SSDs are definitely a good thing but they're not bullet proof. A number of people have commented that when an SSD fails it will do so without warning, whereas you often get some sort of warning noise from a HDD before it goes.

Either way SDDs are not suitable for long-term offline storage or backup. After one or two years without being plugged in an SDD will lose data.

1) Make sure you are running a 64 bit OS or many of these suggestions will not do much.
2) Get an SSD and make it your C: drive (boot drive). Put your OS and program files on it. Make your existing drive your D: drive and put the rest of your files on it.
3) Get at least 8gb of RAM. Buy two 4gb sticks so the computer can balance the load. If your motherboard and budget can support it go for 16gb.
4) Only if you've done all of the above, including the 16gb of RAM, should you think about upgrading your graphics card .
5) I wouldn't recommend upgrading the CPU or motherboard.

In line with #5, sometimes your computer is just too old. Before you go on a major renovation, check manufacturers' outlets where they sell last year's models. It may be cheaper than upgrading and you get a manufacturers' warranty.

A stand along GPU would be your biggest upgrade to play assassins creed. id go with a gtx 1060.. tho that may require you to upgrade your power supply as well, your ram is very low too but for gaming if you get a good gpu the gpu will have its own ram making motherboard ram less valuable and frankly terribly slow by comparison.

The processor is really what sets the limit on speed, while other components factor into the equation. RAM doesn't really increase speed, but does enable the simultaneous running of more programs without bogging the system down. I agree with eljorgisimo, that the best upgrade is to go for a SSD over conventional HDD. If you need a lot of space, then add a SSD as the boot and programs drive while keeping the HDD for file storage. This should be in the number one position of the article. As for the graphics card, you will not notice any difference unless you are a gamer or rendering videos. Like someone said, if the PC is running on Intel atom or similar, there is not much that can be done to improve performance unless you actually change the processor.

I'm going to give instructions that I followed to setup my Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit system.
I agree with the first step in this article, and I have 8GB installed that came with the kit that I built this PC with, altho I've made a few alterations as I could afford them.

Currently I have a 128GB ADATA SSD with Windows 7 installed on it. I also have a 1.5TB Westen Digital Black HHD.

What I did was go to the HHD and create folders for Libraries and the sub-folders for each of the four that Win 7 creates when it's installed: Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos. I then right click on them and click to include them in the default Library.

Then open Windows Explorer and click on each of the four sub-folders under Libraries, then locate the sub you created on the HDD (D:\) and then click to make it the default folder for the main folder (one of the 4 Library Folders). Once you do this, every thing you save to one of the libraries will go to the D:\(HDD). saving space on the SSD.

Next step is to create folders Program Files and Program Files (x86) on D:\.

Once I've done that, any apps I install, which normally defaults to the c:\ drive, I click in the box showing the location of install, hit home, delete C and then type D:.... so that all apps are installed on the D:\ drive.

The exception to this is an app installer that allows you no choice of install location and automatically go to C:\ There aren't many that do that but the ones that do, I decide do I really want this app and am willing to let it use space on the SSD.

When you install apps to the D:\ drive the installer sends necessary file to AppData and other locations on the SSD, which is mostly unavoidable, but they usually don't use much space.

I'm gonna stop for now, but I think I've covered this enough that it can be followed and you'll get great results, at least I have and hope you do as well.

I've got a very similar setup to yours that I build back in 2013, and it has worked exceptionally well! It boots up in seconds, but the D drive is still plenty fast enough for my games.

The only issue I've had is a very random one where the PC mysteriously tries to boot from D instead of C, but a reboot into bios, advanced bios settings, and a move of the SSD back up to the number one boot slot fixes it for a few more months.

If it were actually annoying I'd take the time to track down the real cause, but I suspect it's just a BIOS glitch. Keeps life interesting!

Increased performance = higher power bills is an incorrect conclusion.
SSDs, modern generation chip-sets (on motherboards), CPU's and GPU's all use less power and have better performance than their predecessors.

Yes, if you upgraded only the CPU in your current system it will use more power but its not necessarily the case in all upgrades.

We have recently begun to experiment with ssd drives and the performance is nothing short of astounding. If speed and performance is the issue and you can sacrifice capacity (or have the scratch to afford a large ssd) this is the upgrade that will yield the biggest boost in performance by far.

I am a PC gamer. My first option is to keep an updated discrete VGA and a good CPU. I have only 8GB of ram and a low end MOBO which is good enough for gaming. HDD specs are not relevant for gaming experience (no additional frames per second when having a solid state drive)

Replacing a traditional hard drive w/ an SSD has been the best upgrade for me for almost any machine. The only one it hasn't worked for was my wife's netbook (2009) which has an Intel Atom processor. The SSD didn't make the computer any faster at all.

SSDs have made my other older laptops (Intel Core 2 Duo) useful again. Not bad for a $50 investment.

The most stark performance change you can make is for sure, without a doubt is going from mechanical to SSD. I have a couple older laptops that run like little ponies. And as long as you're not looking for TOO much space, a nice 120GB will only set you back about 50$. If you watch for sales, you can get a decent brand 500GB for well under 200$

I've had much joy recently taking laptops with Vista Business and adding RAM, an SSD and Windows 7. The difference between Vista on a 5400rpm HDD and Win 7 on an SSD is miraculous and can make a 6-7 year old laptop very useable again.

Not mentioned but something that will make a significant performance upgrade, especially on older hardware, is to put the operating system on a SSD while keeping the data on a traditional drive. SSDs of sufficient size to hold the operating system have come down in price to the point where you get a lot of bang for your buck.
It does take a little more savy to get things configured right than just loading an operating system from a disk but it is a lot less "learning curve" than actually going out and earning the money necessary to replace the whole box, or even do a significant enough hardware upgrade in other areas to achieve the same performance increase.

I'd go for RAM first (8GB is probably enough and make sure you get the type your motherboard supports) followed by an SSD. But remember that when getting an SSD, you can add it to the disk you have rather than replacing it. Put your OS and program files on the SSD and your documents and multimedia on the old HDD.

With performance, comes the equal pressure of hiking that electricity bill up ( unless it's at a fixed rate). I think if you're a professional working several projects, it's worth the upgrade but most people use it for mundane tasks which doesn't require much power at all. So it isn't a good idea to jump on the band wagon when everyone is upgrading their PCs.

An SSD *is* a miracle PC upgrade most of the time. As long as a PC has enough RAM for its operating system and typical workload, moving to an SSD will absolutely provide the biggest overall improvement to a computer since a PC's storage subsystem is always going to be the slowest component that is in continuous use. Reducing boot or application load times by 50 or 75% vs. a magnetic disk drive feels pretty miraculous to me.

Andy is a former print journalist and magazine editor who has been writing about technology for 15 years. In that time he has contributed to countless publications and produced copywriting work for large tech companies. He has also provided expert comment for the media and hosted panels at industry events.